If a Jewish person who lays Tefillin develops dementia and begins to forget things is it okay for someone to help that person with the correct procedure and prayers for putting it on?
Ultimately, this question asks after how we treat the person who has lost full control of his mental faculties. While on the immediate level, one can help another put on tefillin (many Chabad emissaries would be out of a job if this were not permitted), the other person's diminished mental state leads to some concern. Specifically, if the person can no longer identify their bodily functions (and thus might soil themselves while wearing tefillin), then they cannot put on tefillin. As this question references someone who is “beginning to forget,” I am addressing the person who has moments of confusion and moments of lucidity.
In the Talmud (Haggigah 2b) we are told that the shoteh, literally the idiot or insane person, is exempt from mitzvot. A person must have reason in order to be held responsible for one's actions. The man with dementia is in the process of transforming into someone who eventually will not be held responsible for his actions. (See this great article entitled “Halakhic Sensitivity to the Psychotic Individual: The Shoteh” for further reading).
The rabbis of the Talmud are familiar with the process of aging and tell a couple of stories about rabbis who have lost their learning. Reflecting on the line in Devarim 10:2, “I will inscribe on the tablets the commandments that were on the first tablets that you smashed, and you shall deposit them in the ark,” R' Yosef notes (TB Menahot 99a), “This teaches us that both the tablets and the fragments of the tablets were placed in the ark. Hence, a scholar who has forgotten his learning through no fault of his own, must not be treated with disrespect.” The person who has lost his Torah, should be treated with the greatest of dignity. Like the broken tablets, a person's value is not predicated on functionality.
Elsewhere, (TB Shabbat 147b) we learn how Elazar ben Arach went to Perugita, a place known for its wine production and its baths, and lost his Torah. As the story is told, there seems to be blame put upon Elazar for leaving the beit midrash (house of study) and pursuing a life of more mundane things. The end of the story is the most powerful for our purposes. After returning to the beit midrash and reading Torah incorrectly (our sign that he lost his Torah), “the sages pray for him, and his learning returns.”
Let us read this as the sages prayed with him and his learning returned! We put tefillin on at synagogue, surrounded by our community, at shacharit, the morning prayer service. As dementia is a complicated and painful process, the more we can do to ease the sufferer's confusion the better. Tefillin is a daily ritual (excluding Shabbat and holidays). It is a practice rooted in physicality, built upon muscle and sense memory. It transcends time, in that it acts as an anchor, drawing our days together. When I put on tefillin, I tap into all the other times and places that have put on tefillin. The sufferer of dementia has not completely lost his Torah, rather his Torah has become unmoored. Perhaps the laying of tefillin, with a helping community engaged in the practice of affirming human dignity, can restore this person to feel whole again, even if only for a few moments.
develops dementia and begins to forget things, is it okay for someone to help him with the correct procedure for putting it on?
Answer:
The Data:
In order to answer the question, may a demented person be permitted and/or aided in wearing tefillin, we consider the following issues, standards, and values.
a. The commandments oblige rational people. A shoteh, or deranged person, is not obliged, i.e. commanded, to observe the positive norms of Jewish law. bGittin 67b places the threshold of mental capacity to write or to commission a writing of a writ of divorce to be the ability to respond appropriately, i.e. e.g. identifying winter matters in the winter. A person who fails to meet this threshold, i.e., the shoteh, may not write or even commission the writing of a writ of Jewish divorce. bGittin 22b-23a.
b. Maimonides, Tefillin 4:3 rules that one who cannot control one’s body functions may not wear tefillin.
c. bHullin 85a allows women to perform leaning on the animal they are offering for cultic sacrifice.
d. Maimonides, Edut 9-10 issues the following rulings:
i. Once designated a shoteh, or a person suffering from dementia, that person may not give testimony in court by Torah law because he, being incompetent, is not commanded to obey the commandments, one of which is testifying in court.
ii. This rule applies not only to wantonly destructive people, who walk naked on the street, break dishes and throw stones; even if they are only in a state of disorientation, these rules apply.
iii. If one is intermittently lucid and demented, when lucid, the person may serve as a witness and when demented, not so.
iv. One must deliberate with forethought regarding the testimony [and religious obligations] of the disabled.
v. The category of shoteh refers not only to the demented, but to those who do not realize contradictions, whose acuity is more diminished than those who are unlettered, are disoriented.
vi. The discretion to make the subjective assessment is given to the presiding rabbinic officer.
The Ruling:
i. When deranged, a person is exempt from the commandments.
ii. In the gray area, where we are uncertain regarding the dementia, the patient should wear tefillin.
iii. If the patient is unable to control one’s body functions, even if lucid he may not wear tefilllin.
iv. A somewhat demented man who wants to grasp reality and wear tefillin may do so, and be assisted by an aid. Since women may lean on the sacrifice to make them feel good, with the Oral Torah’s approval, the wearing of tefillin on the part of a person who is able to control body functions, if it makes feel good, may also do so.
If a Jewish person who lays Tefillin develops dementia and begins to forget things is it okay for someone to help that person with the correct procedure and prayers for putting it on?
What a lovely gesture, and what a wonderful example of hesed (lovingkindness): to help a person with dementia to put on tefillin.
By doing so, you are helping to maintain that person’s connection with Judaism, with the Jewish people, with God, and with him/herself.
There is a beautiful midrash that illustrates the Jewish religious obligation to tend to our elders (and, by extension, all those with diminished capacity) with love and compassion as they begin to decline.
The background of the midrash is the story of the Giving of the Ten Commandments. You may recall that as Moses was coming down the mountain with the Ten Commandments, he hears and sees the people worshipping the Golden Calf and engaging in wild partying. In anger and disgust, he hurls the Ten Commandments to the ground and smashes them to pieces. After rebuke, recrimination, prayer and repentance, God forgives the people and tells Moses to go up the mountain again to get a second set of tablets. When Moses comes down with the second set, God commands him to put them in the Ark. But the language used (Deuteronomy 10:2) suggests that Moses was supposed to put more in the Ark than just the second set. The idea arose that Moses not only put the second set of tablets in the ark, but the sacred fragments of the first set as well, because even though they were no longer legible or usable, they were still sacred and precious, and deserved to be treated reverentially.
The conclusion is obvious. Even when our loved ones begin to lose their intellectual abilities, we should still strive to treat them with reverence and love. I think it is particularly loving and appropriate to help someone for whom tefillin were and still are important, to continue symbolically to bind the intellectual, moral and religious insights from the Torah to his/her consciousness and to his/her body, as long as possible.
I hope that this activity brings you and your loved one much solace.
If a Jewish person who lays Tefillin develops dementia and begins to forget things is it okay for someone to help that person with the correct procedure and prayers for putting it on?
I don’t know if there are any specific halachic (Jewish legal) issues relating to helping someone perform this mitzvah if they cannot do it without such assistance. I am sure that my Orthodox and Conservative colleagues will address them as they might apply. From my Reform perspective, they fade in importance compared to the mitzvah of “v’ahavta l’rayecah cahmocha” (“love your fellow as yourself” Leviticus 19:18).
In trying to summarize Reform Judaism’s approach to Jewish Law, I would say that the ethical laws (mitzvot that relate to how we treat others, animals, and the environment) are binding on all Jews and ritual Jewish laws (including kashruit, ritual garments such as kippot and tefillin, etc.) should be studied by serious Reform Jews who should then decide whether he or she hears God speaking to us in the laws. Speaking personally, I can say that I have had some my most profound spiritual moments and insights when bound in my tefillin.
The question as to whether to help someone with their tefillin springs from a sense of importance in an individual’s fulfilling this mitzvah and the dignity gained by so doing. If we were asking if it were appropriate to help someone with dementia to conduct other important actions such as eating, drinking, or visiting friends, no one would think it anything less than an act of gemulit chasadim (bestowal of loving kindness) to do so. How much more so should we demonstrate this mitzvah in helping someone else perform another mitzvah? Even beyond this common sense approach, the Mishna in Pirke Avot (4:2) teaches that “mitzvah goreret mitzvah, a mitzvah leads to other mitzvot.” Just think how inspiring it would be to see such a beautiful act of caring the context of the morning minyan; how affirming it is to the dignity of life.
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